THE AVENGERS: The LOKI Reaction

The Avengers (2012) – The 6th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joss Whedon – Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Alexis Denisof, Stan Lee, Powers Boothe, Lou Ferrigno, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Welcome to the tenth character-specific reaction to Joss Whedon’s THE AVENGERS. I’ve already written a 4,200+ word review of the film, but that wasn’t nearly enough to cover everything I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to write character-specific reactions to delve a bit deeper into the film. You can find all of the relevant AVENGERS links at the bottom of this post.

Also, please note that these reactions are evolving as we go. If you see some line I got wrong or a detail I overlooked, by all means let me know. I’ve seen the movie twice, but it’s a long movie and the audience reacts wildly in parts, so some things get lost or forgotten or misinterpreted. And I’m sure some of the quotes are wrong, but I will correct the mistakes as I become aware of them. Don’t be surprised if these reactions grow a bit in the coming days.

Let me be clear about what’s coming: SPOILERS. Lots and lots of SPOILERS. Read ahead only if you’re cool with that. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want things ruined, come on back when you do.

Join the conversation on Twitter.

“How desperate are you? That you call on such lost creatures to defend you?”

“How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can’t hope to control, you talk about peace, and you kill ’cause it’s fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did.”

“Ooh, it burns you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power. Unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share? And then to be reminded what real power is.”

“Well, let me know if ‘real power’ wants a magazine or something.”

Of all the characters in MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS, it’s Loki that is the most straightforward.

It’s not that Loki is a bad character or an uninteresting character, or that Tom Hiddleston did a bland job, because Loki is an incredibly interesting character and Tom Hiddleston delivered as fine a performance as anyone in the movie. The problem is that Loki is undressed throughout the movie and so I’m left with little to reveal and much to summarize, which is much less interesting to spend my time on. Which makes me feel like a bit of a jerk, because, as I said, Loki and Hiddleston both bring a lot to the table.

For instance, we learn from Thor (Chris Hemsworth) that Loki is motivated, in part, to destroy and rule the Earth because Thor has chosen to protect it. So go ahead and check the box for the little brother with an inferiority complex. What strikes me about the Thor and Loki relationship here is how Loki is both determined to sever the relationship and yet still dependent on it for his identity. He desires to reject Thor, yet his rejection of Thor ties him even closer to his brother than when they were kids, as Thor himself proves when he asks Loki to remember their childhood together. Where Thor is interested in the past as an attempt to heal their differences, Loki is interested in the past as a means of fueling his villainous acts.

We learn from the Other (Alexis Denisof) that Loki is charged with claiming the Tesseract in exchange for getting to use the Chitauri as his personal army as he attempts to subjugate the Earth. Just as importantly, we learn that Loki isn’t as powerful as he likes to think it is, which brings up an interesting point:

How the hell does Loki work as a character in this movie?

Joss Whedon puts almost all of the weight on his shoulders to be the Big Bad of the film, but after stealing the Tesseract and turning Hawkeye and Erik Selvig (Jeremy Renner and Stellan Skarsgård), all he really does is get himself captured – on purpose – and then get himself defeated intellectually by Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and physically by the Hulk. Plus, for the entire film we know – we know - that there’s someone more powerful than him jerking his chain.

So how does he work? I think it comes down to this: 1. he’s entertaining as hell, 2. despite carrying most of the villainous weight, Whedon doesn’t overburden him, and instead uses Avenger-on-Avenger conflicts to create dramatic tension, and 3. until the Hulk takes him out, Loki just … keeps … coming.

Loki gets into verbal battles with Steve Rogers, some old dude in Germany, Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Tony Stark, and Black Widow, and he pretty much loses all of them. He goes back and forth with Steve (Chris Evans) in Stuttgart and, at best, it’s a draw, as Steve’s, “You’re out of time” comeback is a bit weak. On the Helicarrier, both Fury (“Let me know if ‘real power’ wants a magazine or something”) and Coulson (“You lack conviction”) get the better of their exchanges with the Asgardian. The old dude in Germany delivers one of the most powerful lines in the film. After refusing to kneel before Loki, he tells the god, “There are always men like you,” and he doesn’t mean it as a compliment. The Stark/Loki confrontations are some of the most enjoyable in the film, and we see in their most memorable exchange how Whedon continually uses Loki to set up a witty comeback.

Loki: “Please tell me you’re going to appeal to my humanity.”

Stark: “Actually, I was going to threaten you.”

And later: “I have an army.”

Stark: “We have a Hulk.”

This conversational interplay is used throughout AVENGERS; Loki says something clever, and then someone else says something cleverer. One of Loki’s few victories is with Thor. “Listen to me, brother,” Thor implores just before Iron Man steals him away. Loki watches the two heroes go rocketing away and smirks, “I’m listening,” he says to the emptiness.

His best monologue comes during his imprisonment in the Hulk’s glass cage in the Helicarrier when Widow gets the better of him during an interrogation. Hiddleston delivers a very strong monologue as he rips into Tasha for her willingness to make a deal to save Hawkeye from Loki’s control, and get the “red” removed from her ledger: “Can you? Can you get out that much red? Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red, and you think saving a man no less virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer… pathetic! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!”

“You’re a monster,” Tasha insists, on the verge of tears.

“You brought the monster on board,” Loki sneers, which causes Tasha to drop the act as she now realizes that letting loose the Hulk is Loki’s play. “Thank you,” she says politely and Loki is flabbergasted that he was just bested.

Look at what’s gone on – Loki is getting his horned helmet handed to him all over the place, and yet he’s still entertaining in every single exchange and, most importantly, he doesn’t stop. Every setback is but a tiny speed bump for him. He never loses faith in his belief that he’s better than everyone else, or that his plan will ultimately work, so he just doesn’t stop going forward.

Even at the end of the movie, when the Hulk has slammed him around like an angry kid playing with a rag doll, leaving him battered and bruised on the floor, Loki is still pushing on. Waking up to find the entire Avengers’ roster staring him down, Loki remarks to Stark, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have that drink now.” Like a true schemer, Loki recognizes when it’s time to abandon one plan and start working on the next.

And that’s why Loki works for me despite being continuously chumped. He’s the mastermind of this Tesseract theft, and yet when one of his drones (Hawkeye) tells him he needs, “a distraction and an eyeball,” Loki goes to Stuttgart and gets Clint that eyeball, gives the archer his distraction, and then gets himself captured by the Avengers so he can sow the seeds of discontent from in close.

Tom Hiddleston is fantastic as Loki. Where every other actor survives the Robert Downey Jr. Experience by keeping to their character and surviving, Hiddleston is the one actor who can go right at Downey, matching his energy and intensity. I love, too, that where most superhero films treat villains as one-and-done antagonists, Loki’s story is growing right alongside every other Avenger. The idea of having a THOR movie without Loki now seems preposterous, and as exciting as the idea is that AVENGERS 2 will bring in Thanos, I hope they carve out space for Loki, too, because for all the talk that losing Clark Gregg is a negative, losing Hiddleston would be just as unfortunate.

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THE AVENGERS REVIEW INDEX

THE AVENGERS: THE MOVIE REVIEW
THE AVENGERS: THE HAWKEYE REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE AGENT COULSON REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE BLACK WIDOW REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE NICK FURY REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE MARIA HILL REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CAPTAIN AMERICA REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CHITAURI/THANOS REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE HULK REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE THOR REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE LOKI REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE IRON MAN REACTION

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE REVIEW INDEX

1. IRON MAN
2. THE INCREDIBLE HULK
3. IRON MAN 2
4. THOR
5. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

THE AVENGERS: The THOR Reaction

The Avengers (2012) – The 6th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joss Whedon – Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Alexis Denisof, Stan Lee, Powers Boothe, Lou Ferrigno, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Welcome to the ninth character-specific reaction to Joss Whedon’s THE AVENGERS. I’ve already written a 4,200+ word review of the film, but that wasn’t nearly enough to cover everything I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to write character-specific reactions to delve a bit deeper into the film. You can find all of the relevant AVENGERS links at the bottom of this post.

Also, please note that these reactions are evolving as we go. If you see some line I got wrong or a detail I overlooked, by all means let me know. I’ve seen the movie twice, but it’s a long movie and the audience reacts wildly in parts, so some things get lost or forgotten or misinterpreted. And I’m sure some of the quotes are wrong, but I will correct the mistakes as I become aware of them. Don’t be surprised if these reactions grow a bit in the coming days.

Let me be clear about what’s coming: SPOILERS. Lots and lots of SPOILERS. Read ahead only if you’re cool with that. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want things ruined, come on back when you do.

Join the conversation on Twitter.

“Selvig?”

“He’s an astrophysicist.”

“He’s a friend.”

The more obvious choice for a starting quote to introduce this reaction to Thor, of course, would have been the much funnier, “He’s adopted” line that follows later during this scene, but for me, Thor’s hard insistence that Selvig is a friend provides a far greater insight into his character. It’s a small moment but probably my favorite Thor moment in the entire film because it speaks so much to his character and the transformation he underwent in his solo movie.

Thor, Cap, and Iron Man all get subtle references back to their solo movies which gives a quick nod to the fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe without dwelling on it. There’s a quick scene here aboard the Helicarrier where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is given an update on Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and how SHIELD is protecting her from this reappearance of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), but it’s Thor’s insistence that Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) is a friend that makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel like so much more than separate parts crashing into one another.

“Selvig?” he asks, instantly concerned.

“He’s an astrophysicist,” Banner explains, not understanding that Thor knows him.

“He’s a friend,” Thor snarls back, and even though he’s committed himself to this endeavor thanks to the involvement of his half-brother Loki, it’s the fact that Selvig has been drawn into this that gets Thor’s back up and binds him to the cause beyond familial responsibility. Thor appreciates the role Selvig played in his own transformation from spoiled god to defender of Earth, and he means to rescue him from Loki’s scheme.

Thor’s role in AVENGERS feels muted to me, as he’s the one member of the team that really does feel isolated from the rest of the group. You would think this role would fall to Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and the Hulk, but Stark’s fascination with Banner, everyone’s desire to keep Banner from transforming into the Hulk, and Banner coming out of his shell to become a part of this unit bring him into the inner circle, while Thor stands just outside of it, close but distant at the same time.

We see this in two different areas. First, Mark Ruffalo gets a higher billing than Chris Hemsworth on the poster and in the credits; I have no real understanding of the vagaries of the hierarchy of credit allotment, but it does seem odd that Hemsworth is the only one of the Big 3 who’s not listed in the first three acting credits. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s Bruce Banner who gets to stand with Tony Stark and Captain America (Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans) when they have their “we don’t trust Fury” chat. While this important scene is going on, Thor is on the bridge, discussing the bilgesnipe, an Asgardian beast not found on Earth.

It’s a curious decision.

It’s Thor who gets to stand alongside Iron Man and Cap in the Big 3 money shot after their battle in the forest, but it’s Banner who feels like the third component after that. Thor’s involvement in the film seems designed to play off Loki more than it is to become an Avenger.

After Cap and Iron Man “capture” Loki in Stuttgart and stuff him in the back of a SHIELD jet (which still cracks me up – here’s the guy who stole the Tesseract and Steve and Stark have him sitting free like he’s in the back of a paddywagon), thunder and lightning start gathering around them. Steve catches Loki’s look of concern and asks if he’s afraid of a little lightning.

“I’m not overly fond of what follows,” Loki says somberly.

I love that line and it says absolutely everything you need to know about Thor’s power, just like Tasha’s look of fear in that cabin in India said everything you needed to know about the Hulk as a powerhouse. We don’t have to wait as long to get a peak at Thor’s power, as the Thunder God drops down on the jet, forces his way inside, and steals Loki away from Tony, Steve, and Tasha.

Thor’s approach to dealing with Loki is a mixture of grief, relief, and anger. As he tells him when he pulls him off that jet and lands down on a rocky hill overlooking a forest, “We thought you dead.”

“Did you mourn for me, brother?” Loki asks with a sneer.

Thor is clearly emotional about Loki’s return and his alliance with some unknown alien force and his approach to dealing with him is an older brother scolding a younger sibling for doing something dumb and dangerous, but still willing to help the brother right the wrong. To Thor, the solution is simple: get Loki to return the Tesseract and sever his ties with the Chitauri. This is Thor’s attempt to put his foot down, but Loki isn’t having it, and before Thor can make his final appeal – “Listen to me, brother!” – Iron Man has arrived and taken Thor to the forest ground, where they proceed to spend the next few minutes knocking each other around.

I love the Thor vs. Iron Man fight because it starts with a bit of wordplay, including Stark labeling the Thor/Loki matter as, “Shakespeare in the park,” and then quickly descends to a really brutal fight in which neither man pulls any punches. They hammer each other through trees, unleashing the power of Mjolnir and the power of Stark tech on one another and it’s just pure fanboy delight to watch them throwdown. It’s a fight with no lasting physical consequence – we know neither one of them are going to end up with more than a scratch – so we can concentrate on the emotional consequence. Stark takes a full on lightning blast from Mjolnir, and he’s thrilled to hear that the suit is now operating at 400% capacity.

When Captain America arises and challenges Thor to back down, the Asgardian leaps at him and drops his hammer with a thunderous boom right on Captain America’s shield, which sends a shockwave blast across the forest, felling all three of them and bringing some common sense into the equation.

They all head back to the Helicarrier to sit around a table and talk, and this is where Thor’s disconnect from the rest of the group really takes hold. It’s easy to see him as the outsider during that previous sequence, but it’s reinforced here and never really changes. Steve and Stark bond, Stark and Banner bond, Tasha and Clint have a bond, but Thor never really gets to have a heart-to-heart with anyone on the team. He has a comfortable chat with Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) about how Asgardians like to think they’re better than humans but come down here battling like Asgardian beasts. He knows Coulson a bit from his solo movie and it’s Coulson, Selvig, and Jane Foster (who, again, is only seen in the film as a picture on a monitor) where Thor’s bonds of friendship lie.

So where Steve and Tony get paired up, and Tony and Bruce, and Clint and Tasha, Thor’s only real bond are with his brother Loki and then people who are barely in the movie. During the Big Argument scene where Loki uses the power of his staff to exacerbate everyone’s negative feelings about one another, Thor’s only real contribution is to remark that humans are “small … and petty.”

Unless you know the comic book history of the Avengers, my guess is you’d leave Whedon’s film thinking the Big 3 were Cap, Iron Man, and Hulk, not Thor.

After Thor’s “small and petty” line, he’s really just muscle for the rest of the film. He gets a great fight with Hulk on the Helicarrier, and there’s two things that strike me the most about this brawl. The first is that I love the way Thor calls Mjolnir to him, which is made even cooler when the Hulk tries – and fails – to life Mjolnir off the floor – a moment that could only have been made better if Thor called Mjolnir to him at that moment, thus bringing a hurtling Hulk towards him. There’s only brilliant shot, though, with Thor just pulverizing the Hulk’s face on a massive uppercut with Mjolnir that sends the green giant backwards.

The best part of this fight, however, is that Thor enjoys it. When the Hulk delivers a battering blow and Thor checks his face for blood, he smiles. He wants this fight. He wants the challenge, even as he realizes that he’s outmatched. During the fight with Iron Man, Thor’s strength enabled him to crush Stark’s armor, but here it’s the Hulk with the advantage.

Thor gets trapped in the Helicarrier cage made for the Hulk, and is the only one to witness the Loki vs. Agent Coulson throwdown, and in Loki’s attack on the SHIELD agent, you can see that something breaks inside of Thor. He realizes this isn’t just his brother being incorrigible but that his brother really is a monster.

When Thor had challenged the others earlier to remember that Loki was still his brother, and Tasha informed him that Loki had killed 80 people in two days, Thor’s, “He’s adopted” line got a laugh, but now … now Thor knows there’s no going back and he commits fully to being an Avenger. When Fury later says that he manipulated Coulson’s death with the blood-soaked trading cards because the Avengers “needed a push,” we know that Thor has already gotten his push from Loki’s attack and Coulson’s attempt to fight back.

In the big, final battle against the Chitauri, the Hulk once again benefits at the expense of Thor. First, there’s the truly hilarious moment where the Hulk sucker punches Thor after the two of them team up to take down a Leviathan. It’s one of the film’s funnier moments but it does come at Thor’s expense, and then in another of the film’s best moments, it’s Hulk who takes Loki out of the battle. Since Thor’s one real connection in the film is with his brother, it’s a moment that would have worked better – simply from a structural standpoint – if Thor got to take Loki down. Now, I’m not complaining about what we got because what we got might just well be the best scene in the entire film, but it is important to note that it does potentially rob Thor of a big moment.

The same goes for the end of the film, when Thor calls the thunder but can’t shut the portal down. He does stop additional Chitauri from coming through, but stopping more troops isn’t the same as blowing up the Chitauri mothership (that’s Stark’s moment) or closing the portal (that’s Widow’s). What we’re left with, then, is a Thor that never wholly gels with the team (though he and Cap have a nice moment during the battle), and never has a big, signature moment.

None of this makes my enjoyment in the film any less, but it does point out, I think, that Thor is the one main character in the film that is left a bit wanting. I really like Chris Hemsworth as Thor, and he gives the Asgardian a palpable sense of honor and quiet strength. Thor doesn’t need to have the spotlight and Hemsworth makes Thor’s life on the fringes work wonderfully. A somewhat aloof, somewhat reserved, ready for battle, never backing down from a challenge Thor works for me, and of all of the solo movies in the pipeline, it’s THOR 2 that I’m most looking forward to seeing. I want to see Thor continue to develop as a character and Hemsworth continue to grow as an actor.

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THE AVENGERS REVIEW INDEX

THE AVENGERS: THE MOVIE REVIEW
THE AVENGERS: THE HAWKEYE REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE AGENT COULSON REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE BLACK WIDOW REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE NICK FURY REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE MARIA HILL REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CAPTAIN AMERICA REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CHITAURI/THANOS REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE HULK REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE THOR REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE LOKI REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE IRON MAN REACTION

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE REVIEW INDEX

1. IRON MAN
2. THE INCREDIBLE HULK
3. IRON MAN 2
4. THOR
5. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

THE AVENGERS: The MARIA HILL Reaction

The Avengers (2012) – The 6th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joss Whedon – Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Alexis Denisof, Stan Lee, Powers Boothe, Lou Ferrigno, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Welcome to the fourth character-specific reaction to Joss Whedon’s THE AVENGERS. I’ve already written a 4,200+ word review of the film, but that wasn’t nearly enough to cover everything I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to write character-specific reactions to delve a bit deeper into the film. You can find all of the relevant AVENGERS links at the bottom of this post.

Let me be clear about what’s coming: SPOILERS. Lots and lots of SPOILERS. Read ahead only if you’re cool with that. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want things ruined, come on back when you do.

Join the conversation on Twitter.

“Agent Coulson kept those cards in his locker, not in his jacket.”

“They needed a push.”

I mentioned in the main review of MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS that I was most surprised by the appearance of Pepper Potts (at least until You Know Who showed up in the mid-credits sequence) because I didn’t hear anything about Gwyneth Paltrow being in the movie. Prior to seeing the movie, however, I was most surprised by the inclusion of SHIELD Agent Maria Hill, and the casting of Cobie Smulders to play her.

Nothing against either the fine character of Ms. Hill, nor the acting chops of Ms. Smulders, but in a movie that was already stuffed with leading actors, the decision to include an actress from a CBS sitcom to be Fury’s right hand woman on board the Helicarrier just seemed … curious, let’s say.

Now, I haven’t watched more than a handful of episodes of How I Met Your Mother because I don’t have cable and CBS doesn’t play nice with Hulu, but what I have seen left me with a positive impression of Cobie Smulders. Still, the decision just kind of came from out of nowhere for me and while it neither increased nor decreased my excitement for the movie, I was kinda curious to see if Joss Whedon and Co. had included her because they planned on using Maria Hill as a bit of comic relief (or as the straight man for someone else), or if Smulders had the acting chops to play hard and serious on the bridge of the Helicarrier.

I watched AVENGERS the day of release in a 3D theater, and I hate both a crowded theater and Real 3D technology. I don’t like sitting with mouthy high school kids and I don’t understand why anyone thinks depth of field gives you more than watching a darkened print takes away. Smulders didn’t leave a huge impression on me that first time amid all of the other awesomeness so I wondered what the second viewing would bring.

First, Smulders is perfectly fine as Maria Hill. Second, the role of Maria Hill in AVENGERS is to serve as Fury’s right hand woman on the Helicarrier, an equivalent to Agent Coulson’s role out in the real world. Hill basically exists because there’s a few scenes where the film needs someone from SHIELD to do something, so why not have it all be the same person? And if they’re all going to be the same person, why not have it be Maria Hill? And if it’s going to be Hill, why not have it be Cobie Smulders? It all works for me.

Hill doesn’t get to spout a bunch of wonderful Whedon dialogue and she doesn’t get a whole lot of fun things to do, but the stuff Hill is required to do – generally, ask questions of Fury to help clarify the plot for the audience – is handled well by Smulders.

Hill has three basic movements in AVENGERS: her action scene, her administration role, asking Fury questions.

Her action scene comes at the start of the movie. At a SHIELD facility where Er. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) is working on the Tesseract, the cosmic cube flips out, Loki shows up, turns Hawkeye and Selvig into mind-controlled puppets, and steals the Tesseract as the SHIELD facility start collapsing. Just prior to Loki showing up, Fury sends Hill off to another part of the facility, so she’s not there for all the fun, but then when Hawkeye is driving the getaway vehicle, Hill shows back up to have a car chase down a tunnel.

None of it requires much hardcore acting, and to Smulders credit, she doesn’t try to oversell anything in a desperate attempt to make a name for herself in a big summer film. When the script requires her to question Fury, she does it. When it requires her to run Fury’s errand, she does it. When the script requires her to jump into a jeep and take off after Hawkeye, she does it. When the scene requires her to dig herself out of a cave-in, she does it. Good, solid, professional work.

I don’t have any real complaints.

Except …

I can’t escape the feeling that Hill doesn’t really have much of a soul. That is, her personality seems a bit painted on instead of intrinsic. I don’t have much of a sense that she exists off-camera. She comes off a bit as a suit instead of a uniform, if you catch my meaning. I feel like she’d be more comfortable in a corner office than on the bridge of the Helicarrier. Maybe that makes her the perfect right hand man for Fury; she’s certainly not afraid to question him, but she’s professional enough to question him at the right time.

Because what Hill does well is keep things running on the bridge. That’s her real role, it seems. She’s the liaison between Fury and the Helicarrier; she keeps everything running while Fury is pondering bigger questions, but she always has an ear on what’s going on with Fury and the Avengers.

Take the scene where the Avengers are assembling for the first time around the big table. She spends the scene standing in the liminal space between the Avengers and bridge operations. It’s Hill who answers Stark’s questions about the Helicarrier, and then when Fury arrives she keeps her place but her presences slides into the background. The camera finds her a couple times, like when she’s standing behind Thor as he discusses Loki with the rest of the group. It’s a great shot; you could say that Hill is just standing there to add some depth to the scene, to remind the audience where this meeting is taking place, but the way Hill is postured, with her head half-turned away, gives the impression of that liminal space. She’s the only person in the Helicarrier, in that moment, whose focus is split between the Avengers and the Helicarrier, and Smulders does a bang-up job at looking interested without giving off a mother hen vibe.

It’s these scenes in the middle where Hill is at her most interesting, as her disapproving glance at Stark says more about her than all that running and driving and shooting in the action sequence because it could be anyone running, driving, and shooting, but here on the Helicarrier, it can only be Maria Hill.

Hill’s other contribution to the film is to serve as Sarah Jane to Fury’s Doctor. She asks the questions that clarifies the action for the audience, and her big question is when she raises the issue of Coulson’s trading cards. Fury makes a big show of slapping the bloodied cards down on the table in front of Cap and Stark and remarking, “I guess he never did get them signed.”

Like the dutiful soldier, Hill lets this scene play out without questioning her superior officer, but like the good right hand woman, Hill does question him when they’re alone. She wants to know how the blood got on those cards since Coulson kept them in his locker and not on him, as Fury claimed. When Fury explains, “They needed a push,” Hill simply absorbs the answer. You can see the gears spinning a bit behind her eyes, but Hill doesn’t say either, “Hey, you know, not cool,” or “Well done.”

The Nick Fury subplot ends with Nick coming out of a meeting with the World Security Council. He gets dressed down a bit and Hill wants to know what happens next, and Fury says the Avengers will be there when the world needs them. Again, Hill absorbs the answer and walks back into the operations center of the Helicarrier bridge. Maybe she didn’t get the answer she wanted, but she got the only answer she needed, so while Fury gets one final pose to look cool, Hill goes back to work.

It’s a solid performance by Smulders of a solid character in Maria Hill. While the character never wowed me, she’s a glue character in the movie, doing her part to keep things moving and making sure the audience knows what it needs to know.

And for those wondering why the heck I’m doing a Maria Hill reaction when I haven’t done a reaction for the Big 5 yet (Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Loki), I wanted to see AVENGERS a second time before digging into them. They’ll be coming up next.

Thanks for reading along, everyone.

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THE AVENGERS REVIEW INDEX

THE AVENGERS: THE MOVIE REVIEW
THE AVENGERS: THE HAWKEYE REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE AGENT COULSON REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE BLACK WIDOW REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE NICK FURY REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE MARIA HILL REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CAPTAIN AMERICA REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CHITAURI/THANOS REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE HULK REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE THOR REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE LOKI REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE IRON MAN REACTION

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE REVIEW INDEX

1. IRON MAN
2. THE INCREDIBLE HULK
3. IRON MAN 2
4. THOR
5. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER